Portraits of a Flooded Mind
by Burakkuhoku
Summary: Mahiru Koizumi wasn't one to cry. Even when the one she loved - who never got to know it - died before her. But... what if he did know? (Koizumi x Tanaka, mentions of several others. Sent after Chapter 1 of SDR2, therefore slight spoilers. Self indulgent one-shot.)


A/N: Unlike my last fic (you know, the crack OT3?), this is entirely self-indulgent.

Inspired by a certain AU fic by a damn good writer that made me ship this pairing in the first place.

I still don't own Danganronpa or SDR2. Yeah.

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Koizumi woke up with a start. Her dreams had been becoming more vivid the more she was on this island, and they were tearing her mind apart from the inside. It started with the arrival of that disgusting Monobear - that little black-and-white stuffed toy that was both a massive nuisance whenever it spoke... and the single most deadly thing on this island. That ultimatum of his - kill someone to leave the island - fell deafly on Koizumi's ears when he said it, though she didn't imagine that was true for the others - especially the men... the ones that she couldn't count on... Who'd made her broken enough as it were.

Then came Byakuya Togami's death.

Nobody had seen it happen, but they sure knew who had done it after a bit of digging brought on by Monobear to give the others in the group a chance to live. Admittedly, while Koizumi despised Teruteru Hanamura for being a disgusting pervert towards anything with a pulse - she remembered that he'd hit on Nidai pretty quickly, then turned around and flirted with Sonia - she still didn't want him to be so despairing to have killed Togami - someone she disliked almost as much because of his sheer arrogance - and get himself executed.

The execution itself was... horrific. Koizumi watched in horror as he was coated in breading and essentially became a snack... And the microphone that was apparently implanted in the helicopter Monobear used to carry out Hanamura's execution caught it all... Monobear's maniacal giggles as he dangled Hanamura above the gaping maw of the volcano... Hanamura's frightened screams that were muffled by the coating he's been caked in... the crack and sizzle of the lava as he'd been unceremoniously plunged deep into the fiery liquid and essentially cooked like tonkatsu.

And yet, Mahiru Koizumi did not cry.

It made her feel somewhat heartless that she couldn't cry - but really, she was too busy having been stunned. Her world had just been rocked... All that she had been before this happened was an average photographer, out to prove that she could be better than any man could claim to be, through hard work, pluck, and help from her mother, herself a great photographer.

Though, she found that those dreams of hers - dreams of the live she longed to live, having attained all of her goals - had vanished. Recently, her dreams weren't about her goals in photography, or of either of the two that the students had seen dead before their eyes - one of whom they'd condemned themselves, something that ate at Koizumi even more - or the family that she'd left behind by being brought to this island. Rather, she had vivid dreams of another - specifically, a man.

Gundam Tanaka.

Sure, the breeder was a complete nutcase - what with the way he dressed making him look like a rummage sale reject, to his ridiculous way of talking like he had been pulled straight from a cheesy 80s anime as a minor villain, to those stupid hamsters who he apparently worshipped as Eldritch-like gods. And he seemed to have a temper, as noted by that time he'd lost his earring - coincidentally, the thing that led to Hanamura being caught.

Still...

Koizumi still couldn't help but admire him. The way he was so outgoing... He may walk, talk, and act like an unadulterated basket case, but Koizumi envied how little he seemed to care about his appearance and reputation. Plus, he seemed to have enchanted a number of people in his time on the island with his mannerisms, not the least of which included Sonia, who seemed almost enamoured with him. Unknowingly to him, this number included Koizumi herself, who wanted nothing more than to whisk him away, regardless of her past. He was... different. Special.

And that was why she was so terrified of her recent spate of dreams.

In them, she dreamt that they had found a body, and that Gundam was nowhere to be found. Her heart was pounding, her blood was pumping, her body was drenching itself in worried sweat as she moved as fast as she could to where the body was apparently found.

A quick look at the body told her the news that she dreaded to know. That Gundam Tanaka - the man who'd unknowingly captured her spiteful heart and apparently was never going to let it go again - was dead.

Each time, Koizumi screamed in extreme anguish at what had been lost - at what she had lost. It wasn't real, she knew that much. But she also knew that it easily could be. The same basic sight - his body caked in his own freshly-spilt blood, hamsters worriedly swarming around him. His touch, cold as ice, yet still warm enough that Koizumi longed for it.

And yet, Mahiru Koizumi still would not cry.

It ate at her, that she had apparently become so desensitized to seeing death occur around her that she couldn't even shed a single tear when the man that she loved had passed on, but that never changed. She never cried. Not for the living, not for the dead. She found that it helped her feel stronger - something that she sorely wished to be in this patriarchal world.

Sometimes, the dreams where she saw Gundam die would drag on - eating away at Koizumi's composure even further - through the investigation period, all the way through to the trial. The culprit was always different - it tended to vary in both person and motive, going from someone like Souda (who'd killed him to protect Sonia for some reason) to Kuzuryuu (who did it just so he could go back home), and, in one bizarre case, Akane (who had been simply trying to spar with him, but went a bit too rough). Their executions were always a blur - that second shock, that second loss... it was usually enough to snap her out of her dream.

But she never once found it in her to cry. Because she had accepted that, no matter what, nothing she did would bring her closer to the breeder, so that she could tell him how she felt. She always tried, but either Sonia had stolen his attention, or Saionji or Ibuki was bugging her, or sometimes they had just missed each other - every attempt ended in failure.

One night, however, her dreams took a much more drastic turn.

She dreamed that she had finally managed to tell him the truth - and he reciprocated. The dream stretched on through a flurry of events - Monobear eventually running out of time on his self-imposed limit and releasing the group from the island, her and Tanaka going home to their families and eventually reuniting when the time was right, and then the pair subsequently going steady and starting an animal care magazine, things like that.

She eventually made it to their eventual marriage - it was a large affair, with the bride and her party - Saionji, Ibuki, a reluctant Sonia, and Tsumiki - dressed in simple wedding attire, and the groomsmen - Hinata, Nidai, an oddly cheerful Souda, and Komaeda - wearing unusual tuxedos that Tanaka insisted would 'make them feel like the Four Dark Gods themselves!'.

She would come out and stare straight down the aisle at her love, adorned in some sort of weird outfit with a cape and spiked shoulder pauldrons and other such things that had no place at a wedding - but she still went with it anyway because she didn't care about how he dressed any more. All that mattered was that she was his, and he hers.

At the very end of the dream, she was exchanging her vows, and, through joyful, tear-streaked eyes, had finally managed to hear herself say those three words that she oh so longed to utter for real.

"I love you."

Then, as she snapped back into reality as the tropical morning sun kissed her freckled skin and deep crimson hair, the photographer sat up, trying to take in what had just happened within herself. How she had finally said the words that she wanted to say to the man of her dreams... And how she had failed time and again to carry out her own whims... Most importantly, how helpless she truly felt about the whole thing. As all these thoughts raced through her head, she felt an unusual tang brushing her lips, and a cooling sensation down her cheeks.

For the first time in a long while, Mahiru Koizumi found herself in tears.

* * *

A/N: I ended up listening to Ryuko's theme from KLK during the whole typing of this.

So, yeah. This is sheer self-indulgence, and I'm not sorry. It's a lot more serious than my last fic, but... w/e.


End file.
